The ranks of the Normandy veterans are thinning slowly. Seven decades after D-Day‘s Operation Overlord, the youngest are in their late eighties.

The Normandy Veterans’ Association (NVA) has announced it will disband in November. “This is a very special time because we know it’s our last big occasion here,” said Brigadier David Baines, 89, the NVA president and a gunner in the Royal Artillery who landed on Gold Beach.

“We know that many of us won’t be alive in five years’ time, and probably not even in a year or two,” he said at a ceremony at the Royal Artillery memorial service at La Brèche, on Sword Beach.

They may be a little frailer, but their wartime memories are still razor sharp.

British Normandy Veterans Joe Cattini and Denys Hunter met on Tuesday for the first time in 70 years since they took part in the D-Day landings on the Normandy Beaches.

Mr Cattini, 91, and Mr Hunter, 90, were both in the same unit of Herefordshire Yeomanry on Gold Beach on D-Day and attended a special ceremony at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard before setting off for France for the anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Friday 6th June is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings which saw 156,000 troops from the allied countries including the United Kingdom and the United States join forces to launch the historic attack on the beaches of Normandy, credited with the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.

A series of events commemorating the anniversary are planned for the week with many heads of state travelling to the famous beaches to pay their respects to those who lost their lives.

More than 30 former servicemen, all in their 80s and 90s, have travelled from the US to join 50 British and European veterans to visit the D-Day boats at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Hampshire, before they travel over to France for the 70th anniversary commemorations in Normandy.

Among the veterans were members of the The Millin Pipe Team who have travelled with their families and carers from the Scottish Highlands en route to Sword Beach.

They are commemorating Piper Bill Millin who played his pipes while the D-Day landings went on around him to inspire the troops.

“Now they’re telling us they have nothing to do with it … It’s really frustrating.”

Felice John Tulli, who was 18 when he landed at Omaha Beach with his US army unit, is one of the veterans left in the lurch.

Congressman Grimm’s office reportedly called his daughter in April to tell her that the French government wanted to fly him and a guest across the Atlantic to receive a medal from President Francois Hollande, who will be joined at the ceremony by Barack Obama, the US president and David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

But now that the offer has allegedly been withdrawn, his daughter is hoping to pay for the trip by organising a baseball betting pool.

A spokeswoman for the French Embassy in Washington denied that France had ever offered to fly the men to the beaches where they fought 70 years ago in the largest the lar such attack ever mounted.

But US Army Master Sergeant Manuel Perez, who the New York Post said is one of the coordinators of the event and was liaising between veterans’ families and the French government, said that he had as late as Friday been seeking clarification from the French.

Mr Perez said that “it was common knowledge” that France was paying for flights to Europe for the event, and noted that the country had sponsored the trips of American veterans a decade ago for the 60th anniversary.

No one at the French foreign ministry, which is organising the D-Day commemorations, was immediately available for comment on the accusations that the offer to pay for flights had been made or withdrawn.